You'll have to forgive my small bias for this Farrelly Brothers boy-meets-girl-but-loves-baseball-team charmer. As an 18-year resident of Boston, the movie's ever-present backdrop, I hooked onto this breezy romantic comedy like an eager fish.

It's not like I'm devoted to our beloved Red Sox as obsessively as Ben Wrightman (Jimmy Fallon, in all his awkward glory). When Ben, a high-energy math teacher meets Lindsey, Drew Barrymore's on-the-rise executive, it's wintertime and Ben is, well, different. Because each April, Ben's only love is 26 guys, a ballpark, and a dream... the world of the Boston Red Sox.

Rewatch today what is inevitably going to be one of your favorite movies and see if you don't agree: John Cusack and Ione Skye are one of cinema's biggest loser couples ever. He's into kickboxing. She's the class brain. Together they're a mess, but God help us if we don't want them to end up together. Cameron Crowe crafts one of his best films around the end-of-high-school ennui and the uncertainties that come with that time in your life, but Say Anything... is aging faster than you might think, despite its many classic lines and moments.

I wish I could say I was let down by Four Rooms, but given the sheer volume of just awful buzz about the film, I think I got what I was expecting: an over-anticipated, overworked movie that was full of talent but devoid of taste.

It starts off bad enough. As the credits announce the four writer/directors (Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez, and Quentin Tarantino), a cartoon sequence plays over them, in the tradition of cinematic masterpieces like Mannequin. This sets the stage: New Year's Eve at Hollywood's Mon Signor Hotel and only one bellhop (Tim Roth), and believe me, it's a rillyrilly wacky place. The film then launches into the first of four 30ish-minute shorts, one by each director.

Who would have thought that the life of Jon Cryer -- actor in such memorable films as Hiding Out and Morgan Stewart's Coming Home -- would be such fertile ground for based-on-a-true-story filmmaking?

Based on a script co-written by Cryer himself, Went to Coney Island on a Mission From God... Be Back by Five is a movie about, well, exactly that. Daniel (Cryer) and Stan (Rick Stear) head to the New York landmark in the dead of winter, based on a rumor they've heard about their childhood friend Richie. The long-missing Richie, it seems, has taken up residence under the boardwalk, joining ranks with the insane and otherwise homeless Coney Island-dwellers. It's Daniel and Stan to the rescue.

Long before Laura Palmer's body was discovered wrapped in plastic, poor Jamie was strangled to death aside a lonely river, her unrepentant killer John (a creepy Daniel Roebuck, the guy who played Jay Leno in The Late Shift) taking it upon himself to prove to his friends what he's done. He's not giddy about it, he just wants acknowledgement and, somehow, understanding.

A gripping study of teen ambivalence and the utter lack of angst, River's Edge is a creepy, powerful, and underseen picture that features some virtuoso performances (notably Crispin Glover's Layne, who organizes an ill-conceived campaign to get John out of town). Featuring some of the most inventive and believable dialogue, the locals (including Keanu Reeves and Ione Skye as the only kids even remotely bothered by the death of their friend) are at a loss for what to do. Atmospheric and numbing, the picture is an obvious precursor to Twin Peaks, and a better template David Lynch couldn't have found. The story is loosely based on a real murder, which makes it all the more chilling.

"Fever Pitch" is a romantic sports comedy thatgets by on the same kind of lovable-loser charm that has kept its maincharacter obsessed with the Boston Red Sox since age 7.

The movie is not especially creative, the performancesare not especially memorable, the script lacks structure (at least untilthe start of the baseball season provides an external one), and the directingis often slapdash. But there's a saving grace in the underlying, never-say-dieendearment to the fantasized (even fetish-ized) relationship between schoolteacherBen (Jimmy Fallon) and his beloved BoSox. This authentic eternal optimismalso gives amusing life to Ben's desperate hope that insane fandom won'tkill a newer relationship -- with the first girl he's ever loved as muchas baseball.

During the winter of 2003, Ben falls for an out-of-his-leaguebusiness consultant named Lindsey (Drew Barrymore), and she falls for him-- after being convinced by her girlfriends to change her habit of doomedflings with aggressive, career-driven yuppies. The offbeat sweetness ofthis opposites-attract couple and their conflict over baseball feel exponentiallymore authentic than the snowballing little lies and contrived misunderstandingsthat drive most romantic comedies.

Ben and Lindsey have real laughs together (not rimshotdialogue designed exclusively for cheap guffaws from the audience) andthey make real compromises, recognizing the vast differences between them.Their problems arise because until summer rolls around she just doesn'tquite grasp how truly commitment he is to the seemingly cursed Sox -- despitehis honest attempts to warn her and despite the fact that his apartmentis decorated exclusively in classic Sox memorabilia, hung on every wallsave the one painted like "The Green Monster" back wall of FenwayPark.